Advanced materials are characterized by complex mathematical properties such as the topology and geometry of quantum states. This work demonstrates that in some systems, the evolution of a particle’s spatial distribution is a direct measure of these properties: the relative displacement in two sublattices is found to be given by the quantum metric.

In many quantum materials, different electronic phases can coexist or compete with one another. In this work uniaxial pressure is used to achieve the spatial distribution of charge order that maximizes the superconducting transition temperature.

The ionization via high-intensity X-ray irradiation can cause structural rearrangements within the sample. The authors observe a new structure in ionized liquid water emerging within few femtoseconds from the initial ionization, characterized via a peculiar partial order on a length scale much longer than normally found in water.

Quiescent galaxies have similar amount of cool gas to star forming galaxies, yet why galaxies stop forming stars remains an open question. The authors investigate why passive galaxies remain quiescent using a gravitationally lensed background galaxy to probe the faint, diffuse cool gas around a massive quiescent galaxy, and use lensing configuration to constrain the total mass and geometry of this gas reservoir.

Enhancing deformation of soft microparticles such as cells, capsules and vesicles has widespread applications in cell phenotyping, drug/gene delivery and smart material synthesis. Here, the authors demonstrate that enclosing a capsule into a droplet can amplify the capsule deformation parameter by up to two orders of magnitude, compared with an isolated capsule experiencing identical channel flow conditions.

Asteroid tracking has been demonstrated as a promising and prominent probe of fifth forces arising in several well-motivated models beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. The authors use the state-of-art tracking data for the asteroid Bennu from the OSIRIS-REx mission to derive the tightest limits on fifth forces and ultralight dark matter at the lengths of solar-system objects.

The authors introduce a network growth and adoption model with preferential attachment and asymmetric mixing that can explain the inequalities observed in the group growth dynamics in scientific citation and collaboration. This model can be used to investigate the effect of intervention in group mixing preferences to overcome cumulative disparities.

Engineering sizeable spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in graphene generates effects unmatched in traditional low-dimensional systems. Here, the authors show that the periodic modulation of SOC in 1D patterned graphene heterostructures leads to unusual mini-band structures with symmetry-protected Dirac cones featuring enhanced spin Berry curvature, which paves the way to tunable spin Hall responses.

In quantum networks, entanglement purification is required to ensure that the E2E fidelity of the entanglement connections can support quantum applications reliably. Here, the authors explore the purification resource scheduling problem from a network-level perspective by jointly optimizing purification and resource allocation processes to maximize the throughput under the fidelity requirement.

This work concerns a systematic study of Fe_1-xO employing complementary methods of powder and single-crystal X-ray diffraction and synchrotron Mössbauer source spectroscopy up to 94 GPa and 1700 K. It presents a structural and magnetic transitional pressure-temperature diagram of Fe_1-xO and demonstrates the complex physicochemical properties of simple Fe_1-xO binary oxide under extreme conditions.

Droplet dynamics on lubricated surfaces differ fundamentally from those on dry surfaces due to the formation of a wetting ridge around the droplet. By combining confocal microscopy and lattice Boltzmann simulations, the authors elucidate how the wetting ridge geometry evolves with speed and create heatmaps to reveal where energy is dissipated during motion.

The evolution of X-ray transient absorption signal in studies of ultrafast molecular dynamics is controlled by the shapes of potential energy surfaces of the associated core-excited states. The authors use experiment and theory to measure the slopes of potential energy surfaces for excitations out of the C 1s and Cl 2p shells to valence antibonding orbitals in CCl₄

Silicon photonics can be used to create high-speed large-scale neuromorphic systems for artificial intelligent tasks. Here, the authors discuss the design details and behavior of a resonator spiking neuron that can be fabricated in a commercial silicon photonics foundry process.